


Nameless

by Prim_the_Amazing



Series: Bingo [6]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Amnesia, M/M, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-10-06 23:55:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17355050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prim_the_Amazing/pseuds/Prim_the_Amazing
Summary: And that’s when he, to his horror, finds seven more passports, all with his face but none with the same name. And he has no idea which one is real.





	Nameless

**Author's Note:**

> For gen prompt bingo, trope: secret identity. You know who it would be EXTREMELY inconvenient for to get amnesia? THIS GUY.

He wakes up. He keeps his breathing slow and deep and doesn’t open his eyes or so much as twitch, entirely on instinct. He takes stock of his situation slowly, as much as he can without opening his eyes. His body aches, both like he’s tired and sore, and like he’s covered in a smattering of bruises. He’s lying on a cold, hard even floor, possibly concrete. He’s fully clothed. His mouth tastes like blood. His skull is made of pain. 

There is a voice talking above him, nonchalant, in the one sided way of someone taking a phone call. 

“--got the thief, don’t worry. He’s still out of it. Could you send a car over to come pick him up? Like hell I’m carrying him all the way back on my own. Yeah. Yeah. Sure.” 

The person speaking above him is the one who put him on the ground, he assumes. He can’t quite remember how he got here. The voice doesn’t ring a bell. 

“Fine, I’ll meet you there.” The phone call end, the person sighs, and then there’s a faint rustle of clothing as the person leans down to, presumably, pick him up. 

It’s too bad for them that by then he has noticed the cold, reassuring weight of a knife tucked up his sleeve, and when he strikes his body half strikes for him, all reflexive body memory. He opens his eyes and the world is too bright and moving too fast and it makes the pain in his head brutally  _ spike, _ nausea in his gut, nothing he’s seeing making to his mind through the agony, but he feels his knife sink into their throat, hears the shocked, breathless sound the person makes, feels them topple onto him. He lets himself collapse back onto the floor underneath their weight, staring up at what could be the sky or could be a ceiling, the world spinning around him where he lays motionlessly. 

He lies there until he almost has his bearings, and then he shoves the corpse off of himself and gets up. At least it didn’t bleed on him. He’s got the kind of knife that cauterizes. It’s heavy, and he grunts, and then he gets up slowly, inelegantly, staggering a bit as the blood rushes to his head. He straightens. Spins around, takes in the sights. 

It’s an ugly, plain, cluttered room, probably meant for storage. There is a door and a window. 

It feels more natural to leave via the window, and so he does. 

 

He walks for thirty minutes, spine straights and shoulders loose like he isn’t in pain, casually blending into the crowd that is the public. And then he finds an alley and hides in it to panic because the knowledge that he is in trouble has slowly sunk into his mind as he walked. 

Because he can’t remember who that was, why he was in that room, why people were chasing him, apparently. He can’t remember his  _ name. _ Fear closes around his throat like a vice at that last thought. He breathes carefully and starts going through his pockets. ID. He’s probably got his ID on himself, that will fix it, he’ll know who he is in just a second. 

The first thing his hand finds is a lockpicking set. It fits comfortably in his palm, natural. He gives it a look, and then crouches and sets it down on the ground. The second thing he finds is, thank the heavens, a passport. He flicks it open and looks at his face. He left hand strokes his cheek as he looks, trying to see if his face fits the one on the picture. It’s seems to, all glasses and high cheekbones and short hair and a confident, cocky grin. He makes his mouth do the same grin. It’s easy to mimic the expression, but it feels… forced. Well, it is forced. And why would he be carrying someone else’s ID? 

His name is Perseus Shah, anyways. He looks at it, deeply relieved. There is something wrong about not even knowing your own name, like being adrift at sea with no land in sight. For a long moment (since he’d woken up) he’d felt like no one at all. Plus, Perseus Shah is a pretty name. Has a nice ring to it. 

Perseus Shah is from Venus, is well traveled, in his late thirties, and unmarried. He goes through his pockets to find out more. 

And that’s when he, to his horror, finds seven more passports, all with his face but none with the same name. And he has no idea which one is real. 

 

He travels to each of his passports home address, all of whom are scattered across the galaxy. It takes a long time, but he has a credit card that he just needs to swipe to use with a seemingly endless amount of money attached to it, and a beautiful glittering necklace deep in his pocket that is apparently so infamous that it gets reported stolen on the news. He goes to Saturn and he sees the stunning rings, and an empty warehouse where Christopher Morales’s house should be. He goes to Pluto and sees the marvelous multicolored ice outside of the domes, and an unused parking lot where Marion Valentine’s penthouse should be. He goes to Maxa and sees breathtaking rivers of lava spider webbing across the planets surface, and a demolished building where Quinn Sinclair’s apartment should be. He goes to Peltra and sees gorgeous towers of natural crystal, and his home is not there. He goes to Nairia, beautiful, and it is not home.  He goes to Itau, and it is not home either. 

He’s starting to think that maybe none of the passports are real. That he doesn’t have a home, or a name. That he is just the thief, wandering across the galaxy, stealing and seeing the sights and never staying in one place for too long. It sounds romantic. It sounds lonely. 

He watches the aquatic surface of Itau disappear as the shuttle leaves it behind. He still has one more name to verify before he has to accept the truth. Just one more, and then he’ll have to figure out where to go from here with what little he has. 

Duke Rose goes to Mars. 

 

Duke Rose lives in Hyperion City, a place with a neon skyline to remember, and streets grimier than they look from a distance. He adopts a slouch and a grubby coat five minutes after leaving the space port just to avoid any undue attention. The sorts of neighborhoods he’s walking towards, this is no place to stall tand and proud in a well fitted suit unless you want to be herded into an alley. 

He walks, and he blends in, and he fantasizes about being actually Duke Rose while he still can, already knowing what he’ll find. Duke Rose is a nice name, a pampered, rich name. Duke Rose has a spouse. Duke Rose probably has an indulgent, pleasant life with an indulgent, pleasant partner. He imagines it, a partner. Someone who could tell him who he is, lead him to somewhere where he can feel like he’s got the ground firmly underneath his feet. 

It’s a nice fantasy. It feels somehow fitting that Duke Rose’s lovely home is a burned out, long abandoned husk of a building. He looks at it for a long moment, then turns around and leaves. Nameless. 

He will be fine. He will make do. He has no choice otherwise. He-- 

_ “You,”  _ someone says, and it takes him a long moment for it to register that the word is directed at him. He looks up and sees a face full of shocked recognition, as if he is a man back from the grave. It is his first time ever seeing such a sight. It’s more beautiful than any rings or ice or lava or crystal or diamond necklaces ever could be. 

He takes in the sight of the person in front of him hungrily. He has a scarred face and a broken-crooked nose and an eyepatch, a face that practically screams that it’s got a long and eventful past. The most striking part of his outfit is his long coat and the blaster holstered at his hip, and the most striking thing about him is everything else. Knuckles that look well used. Full lips parted in surprise. Curly hair that he could dig his fingers into. 

He notices the attraction he has for the person, and files it away for later. Now is the time for information. 

“What-- what are you doing here?” he asks, eye going up and down his body like he can’t believe what he’s seeing, feet rooted to the ground where he stands. 

“Looking for someone,” he says. “Perhaps you could help?” 

It doesn’t matter what he says. He isn’t letting this person, the closest thing he’s got to an answer, get away until he’s done with him. Cooperation would be nice, though. 

“I--” he says, still looking overwhelmed, ambushed, “I’m sorr--” 

“Duke Rose ring any bells for you?” he asks smoothly over what sounds like a denial that he’d rather not hear. 

Confusion seeps into the deer-in-headlights look on the poor not-stranger’s face. It’s… cute. 

_ Focus.  _

“What about him?” he asks. 

That’s not a promising response. 

He considers his answer. He could be coy, subtle, misdirect, let the person draw his own conclusions that made sense to him. Try and slowly fish clues out of him until he has the whole picture in front of him without ever revealing that he wasn’t already aware of it. Show no weakness. There is a large part of him that doesn’t want to let on that he doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing. 

There is a larger part of him that wants, inexplicably, irrationally, wholly, to be completely honest with the person in front of him. 

“Is he me?” he asks. 

He has a feeling that he isn’t great at denying himself the things he wants. 

“What?” the person asks. 

“Is he  _ me,” _ he repeats, takes a step closer to the person, “Am I Duke Rose? Is that who I am?” 

“What are you talking--” 

“Do you know my name?” 

He looks at him, not understanding. 

“Because I don’t.” The truth comes out of him like some sort of awful burden. Terrible to admit to, but so freeing to share with someone. He hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted someone to be honest with. When the truth was just sitting inside of himself, silent and unseen by anyone but himself, it was almost like it didn’t exist at all. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? If no one but him ever knows about his amnesia, is it even real? Does it matter? 

He knows for certain that it matters now, though. He can practically see the cogs turning behind the person’s one eye. 

“Nureyev,” he breathes, and just like that he’s a  _ person _ again instead of merely a consolidation of fake passports and lies, “what happened?” 

He sways with relief, eyes closing, head light. “I’m not entirely sure,” he says, laughs, giddy. “Perhaps I should hire a detective to find out.” 

The look on his face at that is an interesting one. 


End file.
